We tried Brandywine last year and really liked it a lot. It was large and tasted good but I don't believe it was an early bloomer

Here is a link that might be useful: Our pond and gardens

My earliest tomato has always been EARLY GIRL also but this year I am trying a few more varieties along with Early Girl.

Penny

My favorite is one we tend to grow in the family, it looks like some of the heirlooms but doesn't appear to be an exact match for any of them. A former neighbor brought the seed back from a trip to Italy in the seventies. The tomatoes get quite large -- some over 1lb. They are not exactly beautiful. The leaves are very wimpy and a dull gray-green, they bloom exceedingly late, but the tomatoes are very solid, good flavor, and make absolutely great additions to a burger. A nice slicing tomato.

I like Early Girl as a filler. Brandywine is nice, too. I tried to get Cherokee Purple to bloom last year, but I had the worst tomatoes ever due to the weather and a decrease in sun in the bed I'd used.

Earliest tomatoes we have are 4th of July. Here, they seem to be French since the first tomatoes usually show up on Bastille Day, not the 4th. They are relatively small, 3" tops, but I think the flavor is quite good - much better than Early Girl. The plants are small enough to be grown in pots, so they can get an early start. This is *my* tomato as opposed to all the others which belong to my DH.

I've had good results with Big Beef and Husky Gold over the past seven years or so, although the past two years were very poor on the tomato front in general because of cooler, wetter weather through the summer. Last year San Marzano (a paste tomato) was my surprise weather-beater. The Big Beef and HG are not particularly early or late; the fruit can get to 3/4 lb. in good weather. HG is a particularly attractive plant, potato-leaved and stocky (maybe 4-5 feet tall, not truly a dwarf as sometimes advertised). BB can get tall and heavy - cage it well.

Laurelin

I like the Early Girl so i have some fresh tomatoes while I am waiting on the rest. Last year I did Delicious and it had good flavor but it took them forever to ripen. But like everyone else already stated, Last summer was not good for tomatoes.

Penny

My favorite is Burpee's "Big Mama" a large plum tomato that keeps great...good flavor, meaty, just an all around great tomato.

My earliest tomato every year is Stupice. The first fruits are about 3-4 oz. and they get smaller to about 2 oz. as the season progresses  but thatÂs fine by me, because thatÂs when the larger varieties start to come in. ItÂs earlier than Early Girl and I like it a lot better.

Sweet Baby Girl and Sun Gold are the best flavored, earliest ripening cherry tomatoes IÂve found and they compete with Stupice to be the first to ripen.

My earliest and most productive slicers last year were German Johnson, Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, Champion, and Marianna's Peace. They all produced fruit averaging 10 oz. or better starting around July 23. All the really mega-sized ones I tried took 85-90 days to ripen :((

-- BC --

My favorite mega-sized prolific tomato has got to be the heirloom pineapple tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum 'Pineapple' ). It's very sweet, meaty, unseedy and low acid. Its great fresh for tomato sandwiches or cooked up for sauces. The baby sun gold is a great companion cherry tomato for the pineapples. They are very sweet and also very productive.

-Channon

Wow, thanks for the responses everyone! It sounds like there are some good varieties out there that I've never tried. This evening I'm going to sit down with my Totally Tomatoes catalog & order some of these!

Trudi

Totally Tomatoes doesnÂt have Marianna's Peace. If youÂre interested in that one, which is a very fine tomato, try these sources. They have a lot of other great varieties too.

Marianna's Heirlooms
http://www.mariseeds.com/2005catalog/pinks.html

Sand Hill Preservation Center
http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/Seeds.htm
note -- this is a small 1 or 2 person operation, so it might take a while to get your order. If you need something right now, order it from somewhere else. It is however a very good reliable source, and they do have a lot of good varieties that are hard to find anywhere else.

Tomato Growers Supply
http://www.tomatogrowers.com/beefsteaks2.htm

Victory Seeds
http://www.victoryseeds.com/catalog/vegetable/tomato/tomato_pink.html

Your question about good early varieties comes up regularly on the "Growing Tomatoes" forum. You can find lots of good suggestions by trying keywords such as 'early' in the search feature of that forum. There is an active thread there right now called "Favorite Early tomato?"

Here is a link that might be useful: Favorite Early tomato?